Published

July 26, 2016

WordPress 4.4 was released on Dec 8, 2015. It was the first WordPress release to include the infrastructure for a REST API directly in the core codebase. If you’re not familiar with what that means, then the following claim will probably sound like gobbledy gook to you: the inclusion of a REST API for WordPress is arguably one of the most significant changes to be made to the core codebase in years. This talk will help you understand why.

This talk will be aimed at WordPress professionals of all stripes. Whether you are a developer, designer, business owner, or blogger, you should be paying attention to the REST API in WordPress and why it’s so important (and so powerful) for the future of WordPress applications.

In this talk, we’ll discuss what APIs and what it means for them to be RESTful. We’ll talk about why APIs are important in the first place and what having a RESTful one in the core of WordPress means, in real terms. Last, we will talk about the status of the REST API and the efforts that are underway to integrate it more fully with the core.

If you’re a business owner, designer, blogger, or WordPress developer who’s maybe heard of the WordPress API but you don’t really know what it is or why it’s important, you’ll probably get the most out of this talk.

If you are a polyglot developer with a fair amount of experience working directly with RESTful APIs, this talk will probably be too basic for you.

If you’re completely new to WordPress and haven’t done much more than publish a few blog posts and install a few plugins, there’s a chance this talk will be a bit intimidating for you (although honestly I hope it won’t be and you should be brave and come anyway and make me explain anything that didn’t make sense to you… I’m more than happy to do so).

Takeaways:

What is an API and why do we care about them?
How is the REST API in WordPress different from all those other APIs they have floating around in the WordPress Core? Is this one different somehow or is it just another API? (Hint: it’s very much the former.)
What does a RESTful API for WordPress mean for me as a designer? As a blogger? As a business owner or entrepreneur? As a developer?